Volume 48, Issue 4, October 2022
David O'Brien
Pages 713-744
How Far Can Political Liberalism Support Reforms in Higher Education?
According to a standard picture in the educational policy and educational ethics literature, justice requires significant alterations to higher-education arrangements, in order to equalize opportunity and benefit badly-off social groups. I argue that, if political liberalism is correct, then a range of higher-education reforms favored by the standard picture lack support. After canvassing the standard picture (section 2), I explain why political liberalism entails that some institutions have a special status that prohibits certain kinds of interventions on them (section 3), and I explain why this means that political liberalism cannot vindicate the standard picture (sections 4 and 5).